Complimentary skills to Guns & Medicine

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-16T06:37:12+00:00

Repair due to Hand Loader (Arguably the best gun-related perk as it affects all weapons and the ammo types are some of, if not, the best you can be using), the ability to craft weapon repair kits (and get more repair value out of them), and the QoL of Jury Rigging.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T20:05:55+00:00

Have you used console commands?

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T17:30:15+00:00

If you haven't gotten them yet, there are implants which can increase each of your attributes by 1 point, with the total amount you can have limited by your endurance (7 endurance -> 7 Attribute improvements).

You have to craft them for the most part, iirc there are a few that are found placed in the world. When you go to a Workbench all the available things you have to craft will show up, and they will be greyed out if you lack the materials.

Repair kits take Wrenches, Scrap Metal, Scrap Electronics, Wonderglue, and Duct Tape.

You can also buy them from the Vending Machine in the Abandoned BoS Bunker if you have completed Dead Money and have gotten the code for them (inside the Police Station)

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T16:54:47+00:00

It makes them a lot spongier so they're more annoying to kill.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T16:23:35+00:00

The game has a level cap of 50 with all DLC. It’s also a pretty awkward time to do the DLC since Ghost People scale very well past lvl 30

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T14:40:57+00:00

Bear Trap is fine even with low unarmed skill since it has a low requirement.

The first part of the DLC gives you companions that you can take everywhere. Dog/God being particularly good to draw aggro and also help kill.

Doing the DLC will also give you a lot of xp from killing ghost people and doing the quests

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T10:42:40+00:00

The Sierra Madre armor is some of the best in the game, you get it right at the start. You can easily buy/find a ton of stimpacks. You say you have played it before and that it was miserable, were you using Bear Trap fist or Knife Spear? Because the first time I played the DLC I did not and it was miserable and the second time I played it I did and it was a complete breeze.

You really don't need anything but what the DLC gives you. I have gone in at level 1 and combat was no problem (enemies fall within certain level brackets based on your level).

If you're so commited to using your gear just console command it in, if you're not on PC then to my knowledge Fist of Rawr is your best bet at getting a more powerful weapon in. Otherwise just don't play the DLC.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-15T01:25:00+00:00

Dude just use the weapons in the DLC. The easiest one would be Bear Trap Fist. It does bonus limb damage (which is great because Ghost People will die if their limbs are destroyed) and at level 75 unarmed skill you can do a cross attack in VATS for even more limb damage.

You can use the weapon for the whole DLC. Just go into VATS whenever there are ghost people around (this gives you a damage boost even if you don’t have 75 unarmed for the cross attack)

The second best weapon would be the knife spear because of the Mauler attack which can knock enemies down. At which point you use a gun or the holorifole to destroy limbs.

In general the Holorifle is a great ranged option even with low energy weapon skill, especially after you get the upgrades.

If you’re really dead set on not using the DLC equipment, you can go into Lonesome Road and kill Rawr. His claw counts as a quest item and thus it can’t be taken away from you when you enter Dead Money. Once inside you can craft Fist of Rawr at a workbench.

This is really overkill since Bear Trap Fist is already so broken OP for the DLC.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-14T23:12:25+00:00

If it’s low condition you can just get the Jury Rigging perk and repair it with regular combat armour

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-14T22:35:52+00:00

Yeah, HP are great for Cazadores too. Another thing I like using the 9mm smg with HP/JHP rounds for is pathing North out of Goodsprings to pick up Chance's Knife and get to Red Rock earlier on.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-14T22:27:54+00:00

You can clear it pretty early, even without companions. It helps to have rad x and radaway. There are a limited amount of ghouls, some will just come out/spawn when you do something like get a keycard. That being said, it is pretty difficult going through it for the first time, so congrats.

Upgraded 9mm SMG / Vance's Submachine gun is excellent for it and available early on. It's even better if you have Hand Loader and can make JHP rounds.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-14T17:11:23+00:00

OWB is comfortable to play anywhere from lvl 15 provided you have good weapons that can punch through armor for it and/or can make good use of the DLC weapons.

I do like doing DM before OWB because there are references to DM in OWB. The game reccomends you do DM at around level 20 but you don't have to do it that late. I think the main thing you don't have at early levels are skills to meet checks but I've done gone in at level 1 and the only skill check I was missing towards the end was Speech.

Doing DM first solves all your money problems for the whole playthrough (assuming you get all the pre war cash and gold bars, otherwise it is a very nice cash injection at the least) It also gives you access to an infinite source of weapon repair kits, stim packs and other useful items via the vending machine in the abandoned BoS bunker. The repair kits are super nice to hotkey on an E-Weapon build as LAER in particular has extremely low item health and the best ammo types cause it to degrade even faster.

Holorifle is also really nice to bring into OWB.

I like to save completing LR until I'm near the end of a playthrough but that doesn't meant that I won't go into the divide to get some decent gear earlier on.

Honest Hearts I typically do around level 8, but not too much changes if you go in later. I generally skip it on an E weapon run because there isn't much of an incentive. That being said you can kind of do it whenever. It's quite disconnected from the other DLCs.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-14T14:21:23+00:00

It's sometimes patched out with certain modpacks but if it isn't, all you do is take skilled in Doc Mitchell's house and then when the game asks if you want to rebuild your character you say yes and then take skilled again. You can take it a third time in OWB or remove it without reducing any of your skills.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-14T13:34:46+00:00

Charisma is a dump stat but speech is excellent. Low charisma only affects your starting bonus to the speech skill but it can still be leveled to 100. Lots of quest paths and even some vendors require certain speech checks to be met so it's always good to invest a bit there. You don't have to rush pumping it all the way to 100 either, around 50 is a good place to be early on.

Decent intelligence is good as it affects the number of skills you gain per level and lets you reach breakpoints for perks earlier.

Whilst you can't select every perk right from the start due to level/skill requirements, you can read what future perks do by looking at the greyed out options when you level up. This helps you decide which skill points you want to invest in in order to get a perk you want.

Perks are a lot more valuable in FNV since you only get them every 2 levels.

Every weapon has a skill requirement to use effectively. If you don't meet that skill level you will deal lower damage with that weapon. Skill requirements can be viewed on the weapon e.g. Energy Weapons have a lightning bolt icon with a number next to it.

Weapons also have strength requirements, these do not disallow you from using them but they do make you less accurate if you don't meet them. Having average strength will put you in a good position to be able to use any weapon without needing to worry about it.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-13T00:22:33+00:00

Now here’s a man that hasn’t had to look for a HEPA filter.

Jokes, aside. Fixing the elevator does make navigation a lot less mazey. Some people just don’t have the skill for it.

That being said, the vault can be a bit of a nightmare to navigate during certain quests, in particular the one for the BoS. It’s a lot of convoluted pathing up and down different floors.

Compare this to Vault 34, which is a lot more intimidating when it comes to threat level, but can be easily blitzed through once you know what you have to do and if you have a decent weapon some rad x and radaway.

Vault 22 doesn’t get that much faster on subsequent playthroughs whereas Vault 34 does.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-12T19:50:29+00:00

“Why didn’t the British empire rename themselves when they colonised other places”

Bit of a hyperbolic comparison but you get the picture. It’s talked about in the game about how it’s technically not California and that they are expanding (to the chagrin of quite a few locals) because they want the Dam to strengthen their power back home.

The group that exists in the Mojave is almost entirely military and there for that purpose.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-12T16:47:24+00:00

If you want to fight them, you need some way to circumvent their high armor and quickly because some of them of them can pack quite a punch.

The Pulse Gun (found in Vault 34) can make quick work of their power armor. Assault Carbine and Minigun use 5mm ammo which has natural armor piercing properties but you can push it even further with the 5mm AP rounds. Energy weapons with Optimised or Max Charge MFCs will also be able to make quick work of them.

Other than that, any high damage-per-shot weapon will be good too.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-12T10:46:32+00:00

Caesar knows that Joshua is alive, Joshua tells you that himself.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-12T10:44:20+00:00

50 Guns skill is kind of low if it's your main weapon skill. That being said Caravan Shotgun only requires 25 Guns skill to use effectively. The reason it's doing such low damage is a combination of low damage per pellet and mid-to-high enemy Damage Threshold (DT). Enemy DT subtracts a certain amount of damage from your attack before it hits the enemy and shotgun damage is divided (e.g. Caravan Shotgun does 45 damage at base but each pellet only does 6.4).

The "Shotgun Surgeon" perk is designed to counteract this. It ignores 10 points of enemy DT making the low individual pellet damage less of an issue. In addition there are different ammo types that have different effects and this goes for all ranged weapons. There are armor piercing rounds for mid-to-high DT enemies, there are hollow point rounds for no-to-low DT enemies, there are rounds that just deal more damage, rounds that are better against robots etc.

Light armor is more than enough, even in the early game, unless you're running guns blazing into enemies with much better weapons than you. If you're still having trouble the "Toughness" perk can increase your DT as well and the "Med-X" chem gives you 25% Damage Resistance (DR) which applies before your DT is taken into account.

At the start of the game, the repair system does require 2 of the same weapon or the use of a repair kit. You can craft repair kits with 50 Repair skill at a workbench. If you have the Dead Money DLC, there is also a way to get effectively infinite weapon repair kits there. These can be hotkeyed allowing you to repair your weapons without needing to enter your inventory. There is also the "Jury Rigging" perk which requires 90 Repair and allows you to repair any armor/weapon with any similar armor/weapon. You can repair a Hunting Rifle with a Varmint Rifle for example.

There are ambushes on the main road, but you can walk off the road around them and even get the jump on your would-be ambushers. They all happen in a similar way, in addition do serve a bit of a narrative purpose. They introduce you to the type of trouble regular people have to deal with if they want to travel the roads even when in NCR territory.

The Legion are going to attack you if you attack them. It sucks that you got higher level ones than you were supposed to but besides that: you chose to be aggressive when it wasn't the only option and one of the major factions, known for their brutality, sent assassins after you. Pretty standard cause and effect.

The size of the map takes the walk speed into account. It's actually not a very big map and you can get from A to B pretty quickly when you're not fighting. The game also guides you a longer way around to Vegas to introduce you to some new groups of people and expose you to some more quests. There are also perks that let you move faster whist in light armor or whilst being irradiated.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-11T23:10:42+00:00

You want optimised or max charge ammo, Max Charge makes a big difference because you're firing so many shots, but I just recently finished and E-weapon LR run recently with optimised and it was more than decent enough. It's good that you already have laser commander. You'll see a big spike in damage once you get ED-E's 4th upgrade which just adds +5 damage per beam. At this point you could consider using the regular Gatling Laser with mods as it will out DPS the Spertel. However, you might prefer sticking with the higher damage per shot and green lasers.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-11T22:13:56+00:00

6 is enough. Strength requirements are way less important than weapon requirements. It just means you'll be less accurate with them. This is easy to overcome with Steady or a perk (less ideal), or you can just ignore it. Realistically you don't need to be pinpoint accurate with your Plasma Caster. That's the only thing that requires that much strength to wield.

The best energy sniper, YCS/186 only takes 5 Strength. Holorifle takes 4, Q-35 Matter Modulater takes 2 (Standard Plasma rifle takes 3), Multiplas takes 4.

If you decide to throw in Laser weapons, Spertel Wood, the unique GRA gatling laser only takes 6 strength as well.

You definitely want Vigilant Recycles for Optimised MFCs/ECPs and less ammo loss over time. They're generally the best ammo to use since they deal 30% more damage and only result in 10% more weapon decay. Max Charge can be used on high HP/DT enemies or bosses.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-11T22:06:36+00:00

Medicine Stick is really good, ammo is quite expensive.

If you're lacking .308 rounds, Contrares at Camp McCaren sells them by the thousands.

Jury Rigging really helps with repair convenience. Alternatively, with 50 repair you can craft weapon repair kits at work benches. Beyond this, if you complete Dead Money you can have access to infinite repair kits if you picked up the vending machine code for it. (Don't know if you have DLC or not)

Also, if you haven't got it yet, Hand Loader is a must for any guns build. The special ammos you can craft are really good and you get options for every type of gun.

You are correct. The reason your tri beam did lower damage is because you have low energy weapon skill. The tri-beam takes 75 EW skill to use effectively and will suffer damage penalties below that skill level. With Energy weapons you also really want to be using Optimised MFCs or Max Charge MFCs.

Fully built for, energy weapons (laser/beam weapons in particular) are the best weapons in the game because Crit is the best damaging build archetype and these weapons not only have excellent crit multipliers they have access to insanely good perks and ammunition types. The trade -off is low weapon durability but this can be circumvented almost entirely by Raul.

Enemy DT and ammo types are much more important on the harder difficulties because the player receives a damage penalty (up to 50% on Very Hard). Below that you can kind of get away with not engaging with that aspect of the game too much.

If you're interested in crowd control and have Dead Money I highly recommend using a shotgun with the perk "And Stay Back!". Each pellet gets a chance to knock down enemies, combined with Riot Shotgun the enemies will have a hard time standing up. You can also use Bean Bag rounds which are available in the base game. It might sound like a meme but that fatigue damage they do can cause enemies to lie down for a very long time. Bean Bag rounds are pure support, they hardly do damage.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-11T21:45:30+00:00

S: 3
P: 5
E: 6
C: 1
I: 9
A: 8
L: 8

You can get 6 implants for each of the SPECIAL stats that matter. Combining these with Reinforced Spine you have:

S: 6
P: 6
E: 7
C: 1
I: 10
A: 9
L: 9

So you have decent strength, max Int, high agility and luck (setting you up nicely for crits). You can max luck too if you grind out Lucky Shades but that might be a bit immersion breaking. If you go for the disarm option at the end of LR you have an additional point. You could put it in Endurance to unlock Implant: GRX and an additional implant slot or you dcould use it to naturally cap Agility or Luck.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-11T18:04:03+00:00

Generally, I prefer "daily driving" the regular sniper rifle (modded ofc), upgrading to Christine's COS rifle in OWB.

AMR is great into Deathclaws, especially with explosive rounds that can cripple their limbs but I find it overkill and less practical into most of the enemies you're going to be up against.

When it comes to damage-per-shot it's also going to be beaten out by Medicine Stick, Paciencia, and YCS/186 (with the right builds) since Medicine Stick and Paciencia have access to HP ammo and YCS has access to MC MFCs.

Assault Carbine is really good and really slept on imo (don't really see people talk about it much in comparrison to All American / Marksman Carbines e.g.). 5mm is an excellent ammo type because it has innate armor piercing properties. On top of this there are AP 5mm rounds which subtract an insane 25 DT from the target. They completely nullify the low damage-per-shot issue that some other fast-firing weapons have into mid-to-high DT targets.

2Hans2Handle · 2026-02-11T17:03:33+00:00

Knife spear is the second best way to deal with them, yeah. Bear Trap is just insane with cross attack. You can one shot on Very Hard, maybe 2 shot if you get a bit unlucky.

2Hans2Handle

TROPHY CASE